The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
AGNES REPPLIEROur belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
AGNES REPPLIER -
Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
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Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
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In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
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The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.
AGNES REPPLIER -
The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.
AGNES REPPLIER -
to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
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Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?
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We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.
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The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.
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There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
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Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.
AGNES REPPLIER -
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
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If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.
AGNES REPPLIER